Featured projects

Psychology Clinical Neuroscience Center (PCNC) and Department of Psychology researchers studying the brain use a system at the UNM Center for Advanced Research Computing, as well as another one on-site, to store data generated by their projects.

University of New Mexico Ph.D. student Schuyler Liphardt spends his days at the Center for Advanced Research Computing (CARC) not only doing his own research, but helping the Center serve students and faculty pursuing their own studies. Liphardt is currently working on his Ph.D. in biology and employed as a research graduate assistant at CARC.

Dancing and engineering seem worlds apart, one artsy, the other all about math and technology. But a research group of computer engineering students housed at the University of New Mexico Center for Advanced Research Computing has collaborated with a local dancer to improve her performance while learning more about the possibilities of their own work.

There are hundreds of railroad overpasses all over the country that get hit regularly by vehicles passing underneath. Professor Fernando Moreu and his team are searching for a way to prevent expensive and risky damage to these overpasses.

People die. All the time. From many causes, including old age, disease, accidents, murder. But researchers can learn from these deaths. Dr. Heather Edgar, forensic anthropologist at the UNM Office of Medical Investigator, and her team are currently converting a dataset of whole body decedent CT scans into a searchable database that will be available to researchers.

The Mars rover Curiosity is in the news right now as NASA celebrates the robot’s five-year sojourn across the planet surface. The rover is sending back breathtaking images and collecting data in anticipation of humans arriving in the 2030s. But before humans arrive, a swarm of smaller robots may already be on the planet, navigating the terrain and working together like a colony of ants to collect resources.

There is a national goal to increase wind energy in the United States to meet 20 percent of the demand for electricity by the year 2030. However, there are some challenges to reaching this goal. Two of the issues facing wind energy farms are the wakes emitted from each turbine, which reduces the efficiency of turbines around them, and the noise levels caused by the rotors. Dr. Sang Lee and his team are using the resources at the UNM Center for Advanced Research Computing to overcome these issues in order to build more efficient, more powerful wind turbines and wind farms to meet that goal.

Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is one of the leading causes of blindness in the world and affects up to 80 percent of diabetic patients. However, with proper detection, the effects of DR can be often treated and blindness prevented. Computer Science doctoral student Jeremy Benson is looking at more effective screening methods.

Scientists at The University of New Mexico studying the field of nanophotonics are developing new perspectives never seen before through their research. In turn, the understanding of these theoretical concepts is enabling physical scientists to create more efficient nanostructures.